But as China moves towards being the center of potato production in Asia, the humble potato is now bringing wealth to some in western China who had been living in poverty.

Chen Chunlan, a potato farmer in Dingxi in northwest China’s Gansu province, now lives a satisfying life in her newly-built, well-furnished home.

Chen credits her potato fields for the improved standard of living — they provide her with an annual income of 70,000 yuan ($10,400).

But Chen clearly recalls the hard times not long ago, when local peasants often had to worry about their next meal.

“We used to grow wheat, but the meager harvest could barely feed us, let alone allow us to save some money,” said Chen.

In 2001, destitution even forced Chen to flee Dingxi to try to earn a living in another place.

Dingxi, with its cold and arid climate and hence low agricultural yield, has long been listed as one of China’s poorest regions.

In 1995, a severe drought hit Dingxi, and almost everything in the fields withered. But to the locals’ surprise, the potatoes survived the catastrophe.

“Potatoes are amazingly drought-resistant and can acclimatize well to Dingxi’s agricultural conditions,” explained Wang Yihang, the provincial potato expert.

Next year, the Dingxi government launched the “Potato Project” to popularize the cultivation of potatoes to guarantee basic food supply.

Dingxi grows more potatoes than any other city in China, boasting over 200,000 hectares of potato fields, or one third of the city’s arable land.

Thanks to the edible tuber, the city no longer has a food supply problem, and attention has shifted to making the “food of the poor” a major export.

“Some freshly harvested potatoes are transported to wholesale markets all over China on special trains, while others are processed in local plants,” said Yang Zixing, party secretary of Dingxi city, referring to the city’s 20 large factories that turn the smaller, unsuited-for-sale potatoes into starch or potato chips. Previously, these potatoes would have been discarded or used for pig feed.

Some companies have struck deals with Simplot, McDonald’s french-fries supplier, to grow and process high-quality potatoes.

The city’s potato-processing factories are the source for 25 percent of the local farmers’ income.

Dingxi’s success story suggests a bright future for potato cultivation in China, as cultivation of the tiny tuber rapidly expands into China’s western regions.

“Over 4.7 million hectares of arable land in China are now growing potatoes, up from 2.7 million in the 1980s,” said Wang.

“Most of the increased potato cultivation is in China’s poor western regions — the provinces of Gansu, Shaanxi and Qinghai, and the Ningxia Hui autonomous region.”

The potato has proven to be more suitable than rice and wheat for cultivation on western China’s arid, barren lands, playing a major role in relieving starvation in these regions.

Furthermore, surging demand for potato products like starch can galvanize these less-developed regions to quickly industrialize.

“Potatoes can be made into materials or ingredients that are needed in food processing, papermaking, pharmaceuticals, textiles and many other industries,” said Wang.

And although in China potatoes are traditionally not a staple food as they are in many other parts of the world, it is nevertheless an integral part of Chinese cuisine.

Potato-based snacks are also becoming popular in China, especially after western fast food giants like McDonald’s and KFC began selling french fries.

Given the market potential and adaptability to arid areas, the potato may well be a new industrial star in China’s west.

According to the British “Daily Telegraph” reported that December 4, the Royal Botanic Gardens (also known as Kew Gardens) and botanist who discovered after years of research, including tomatoes and potatoes, including a variety of vegetables are in fact “flesh-eating” plants, they eat insects and Venus fly-trap technique worthy of par.

The findings of the International Plant academic circles have expressed shock and joy, because for many years that scientists have only tomatoes and potatoes to absorb nutrients from the soil. In addition to the soil in fact, the above-mentioned two kinds of vegetables, stems soft parts of insects, firmly hair can “stick”, etc. It died out in the earth, the tomatoes and potatoes can “bites” of. Scientists believe that this phenomenon is the evolution generated, is a lot of self-fertilizing plants a way, so that even tomatoes and potatoes that have been human “domesticated” plants have been a long time inevitably retained this characteristic. In some cases, the soil is very poor, these plants can not provide the necessary nutrients, so they can only be through “trap” Insect to normal growth.

Scientists say they have long been seriously underestimated the “carnivorous” plant types and quantities, in fact, there are many people recognized as the most moderate of the plant are very much like “meat” of, for instance, morning glory, tobacco, shepherd’s purse, and cabbage are “carnivorous” plant of the column. Kew Gardens botanist Mark Chase, said: “We usually eat tomatoes and potatoes have hair, especially hair sticky tomatoes are particularly high. They do often start with insects, kill them and eat – the people generally agree that plants could not move, will not harm other organisms, but in fact some plants really like to eat insects. “

The system developed by the Campinas Agronomy Institute (IAC) in Brazil will be granted to the Agricultural Research Institute in Hulunbeir after meetings set up September 2008 and July this year by IAC researcher José Alberto Caram de Souza Dias.

Instead of conventional export where the whole potato is used, in this case only the shoots of the tubers are used.

Initially, the partnership with China involved the transfer of Dutch varieties of seed potato but for bureaucratic reasons, the Dutch products were replaced by those developed at the IAC, all virus-free and resistant to the main diseases found in Chinese cultivation.

The Chinese government aims to expand potato production which it intends to increase from 4.5 million hectares to 6 million.

The productivity of potato cultivation in China is small with an average crop of 15 tonnes per hectare, while in Brazil 50 tonnes are harvested per hectare with a specialized workforce and favourable production systems. (macauhub)